The League of Women Voters presented three panelists with the overarching question Thursday night — “How do we get to zero detention in King County?”

Through a series of questions focused on the $200 million project to build a new juvenile legal and detention center on 12th Ave, systemic racism, and the goal of zero detention for youth, panelists agreed there’s a lot of changes that can be made to incarcerate fewer young people in King County.

The three panelists had mixed opinions on whether or not the new detention center is a good idea.

Wesley Saint Clair said he struggles with where he stands on the project — the current building is in poor shape and costs more each year to maintain, the King County Superior Court judge said, but also the needs of the youth staying there aren’t being met. Ideally, there would be smaller facilities throughout the county, but that’s not feasible.

“We know incarceration is not a cure to much of anything,” he said. The right services need to be put in place to help youth before they end up in the detention center. Continue reading →

For most of his 27-year career, Dark Age Tattoo artist Eric Eye has specialized in realistic portraiture and textural work.

“It’s something that’s come naturally to me,” Eye said about his focus.

About a year before Eye met his girlfriend, she had had a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery in her battle with breast cancer. To get a well done restorative nipple tattoo, she had to travel to the east coast.

“Her story, it really kind of spoke to me. I understood it on a very personal level how much of a transformation it had made for her,” he told CHS.

Pratt Fine Arts Center’s plans to expand are moving forward with designs in progress and money in the bank to anchor a six-story, mixed-use development on the block it calls home at 20th and Jackson.

“In order to achieve Pratt’s long term vision, we have worked tirelessly to find the best way to accommodate Pratt’s growing need for additional facilities to better serve art students and independent artists,” Steve Galatro, Pratt executive director said. “This multifaceted development will expand our capacity, unlock new potential, strengthen the connections to our neighborhood, and ensure that creativity thrives in a dynamic urban campus for many years to come.” Continue reading →

Charlene Strong, a human rights advocate, is hoping to take her work a step further by as a Seattle City Council member. She is running for Position 8.

Like many others in Seattle who watched in shock as Donald Trump was elected president in November, the event pushed Strong into action and she decided to run for office.

“How did we as such smart, intelligent people not anticipate this big, huge political backlash?,” Strong pondered in an interview with CHS.

The 53-year-old wife and mother who runs a physical therapy practice in Interbay with her wife and is the chair of the Washington State Human Rights Commission said people had asked her when she’s going to run. Now, they have an answer. Continue reading →

Christopher Floyd views Seattle as the “sort of” video game capital of the U.S. — it’s got to be ranked high anyway, he said. But he was surprised how disconnected the video game community was, and decided to do something about it.

In October, Indies Workshop’s landlords in SoDo wanted to hike Floyd’s rent, and after having renovated the space, Floyd wasn’t OK with that. He was deciding whether or not to step away from Indies Workshop, currently a passion project he doesn’t make a profit from. His “real job” is getting developers together and helping them show their games at conventions.

Hoping to continue their long relationship with the literary-focused nonprofit, property owners of the under-construction, mixed-use development on 11th Ave and E Olive have offered to sell the nonprofit Hugo House a 10,000 square-foot ground floor space for about half of its estimated market value.

A campaign to create a $1.6 million program to address clean streets, public safety, and business growth across Capitol Hill’s commercial districts will begin a new phase this week with the first in a series of planned open house sessions to gather support for an expanded Capitol Hill Business Improvement Area and a new, larger charter for the organization behind the campaign, the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce.

In February, whenchamberdirector Sierra Hansenofficially announced the campaign to form a new Business Improvement Area, she said the organization had received commitments from about half of the 60% of 650 commercial property owners needed to move the proposal forward to the City Council for approval.

As the petitions have been circulating, Hansen said much of the past month has been spent following up with those committed owners, gathering official signatures and scheduling meetings with other stakeholders.

Hansen declined to say what gains in the percentage of needed signatures the chamber has been able to secure in the early days of the campaign.

Not everyone is buying into it. Morris Groberman, who along with an investment partnership owns Harvard Market, says the current, smaller BIA focused only on Broadway already doesn’t do enough to clean up the neighborhood and keep crimes down — and he says his taxes are high enough already.

“I can only pass so much on to the residents before it hits my bottom line,” he said. Continue reading →

CHS CALENDAR

Bench Mark, a Partnership for Youth exhibition, is an exploration of architecture through space, function, and purpose. Created during sixteen after-school sessions March–May 2018, this collection of works traces the design thinking process students applied while considering Seattle’s urban environment and humans’ … Continue reading →

Born to Mexican immigrants in Walla Walla, WA, Juventino Aranda’s search for self-identity informs his process as it relates to the social, political, and economic struggles of Chicanos. His art and activist practices are influenced by the grassroots movements of … Continue reading →

Join us for our six-ish mile all paces run. For Tuesday run, we have a winter route at 5.7 mi and a summer route at 6.3 mi. The summer route explores the trails of Interlaken and the Arboretum. The winter … Continue reading →

General class is open to all students and starts with 45 minutes of stretching and calisthenics, followed by 45 minutes of drill. In this class the students are drilled on techniques specific to their belt level. Exercises include combination, target, … Continue reading →

Join Chabad of Capitol Hill for our weekly Kabbalah and Coffee Tanya – A Masterpiece of Chassidic wisdom written by Rabbi Shneur Zalmen of Liadi (1745 – 1812). Based on the Kabbalistic works of the Zohar, the Baal Shem Tov … Continue reading →